Also, Duane was in fact left-handed, despite playing the guitar as if right handed. This added strength in his fretting hand gave him a greater degree of control when bending notes or adding vibrato, plus it meant that his picking hand was not quite as strong, seeming to give him a very light touch. Listen to the version of Dreams from the debut album for an example of his extraordinary control over slow bends and slow vibrato. This also gave him added strength and dexterity with his pinky on his fretting hand.

via Duane Allman (Hotguitarist.com)

Theatre of the Oppressed – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I tried Natto once. Let me just say I had to watch my friend eat it first to believe it was meant to be eaten in that condition (slimy and smelly).
It was interesting…

Natto is a traditional Japanese food made from fermented soybeans, popular especially for breakfast. As a rich source of protein, natto and the soybean paste miso formed a vital source of nutrition in feudal Japan. For some, natto can be an acquired taste due to its powerful smell, strong flavor, and sticky consistency.

via Natt? – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Measure all ingredients precisely. Small variations can make the drink less effective or even harmful. Mix the following:

* 1 quart (950 mL) water

* ½ teaspoon (2.5 g) baking soda

* ½ teaspoon (2.5 g) table salt

* ¼ teaspoon (1.25 g) salt substitute (potassium-based), such as Lite Salt or Morton Salt Substitute

* 2 tablespoons (30 g) sugar

via Rehydration drinks.

-Sweet!

This is one of the best documented cohort-based studies showing that coffee drinking provides protection from dementia in midlife and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in late life.

via George Perry: Faculty of 1000 Biology, 16 Feb 2009 http://www.f1000biology.com/article/id/1147566/evaluation

A night out in a bar is all the more enjoyable if you can digest some science too. That’s the lesson of a growing movement whose character may be local but whose reach is potentially global — and at a small cost.

via The rise of cafe culture : Article : Nature.

The Denver café, organized by University of Colorado immunologist John Cohen, performs another social function: “I know that people have got together after meetings,” he says. “So when people come in alone, we carefully direct them to potential partners.”

via Pop science pulls in public as cafe culture goes global : Article : Nature

What’s next, science hook-ups?

I’m looking for new venues to host the San Antonio Science Cafe.

Previous cafes were at Ruta Maya, which is now closed , Old Town Helotes Bar and Grill, and Lion & Rose Pub and Restaurant. Radius Cafe seems cool, if we can coordinate around their choir events during the week.

On another note, Liberty Bar has my favorite Ethiopian coffee and I need to find out what brand it is. Mmm…

Al Jaffee’s fold-ins for Mad magazine, from the 1960s to the present, in interactive form.

via Fold-Ins, Past and Present – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com.

via NPR’s How Low Can You Go $10 Meals – Farfalle With Potatoes | Mamaliga.

When [Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters] came to Vietnam Day at the Berkeley campus, Kesey addressed assembled people and he  said turn your back on the war and say, “F*ck it”. These were a group of people that were intent on doing something to stop the war, and this was Kesey’s  response. That moment for me embodies this tension, right at the the center of the 1960’s, the tension between counter cultural self-development and an ethos of play, drop out, tune in… Essentially, leave the institutional life of America, that means school, government, politics, and create disorder, and do that as a way of finding what’s true of yourself, do it in the company of others, it had this communal aspect for sure. [...] Ken Kesey is looking for that internally directed, playful response to the oppressive order of the word, and then there’s this political response. Pynchon lets us see both, and he’s parodying both responses in this novel, and in this sense, this novel is very much of its time.

Amy Hungerford – Yale / English

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

via Academic Earth – Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49.